WI Karl Marx migrates to the United States?

CalBear

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Two Words: Wrong Forum.

Please confine current politics to Chat.

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It would be fascinating to see how this would impact his ideas. When Charles Dickens visited the US he thought that working conditions in US factories were far superior to English ones. Marx in the US might have come up with far less radical ideas after comparing the differences between labor on both continents.

I doubt it. A large part of why conditions in the US were better was due to its newness and geography. There is ALOT of land that hasnt been settled, both in the midwest and the West proper. The colonization of the west (because honestly thats what it was) acted as an outlet for disgruntled laborers, something that wasn't possible in Europe both because of a lack of land and an entrenched landed aristocracy that pushed for the enclosure acts. As such American workers had to be treated somewhat better because otherwise they would run off to that cheap land the government was selling.
Marx would have no problem identifying this and realizing it won't last. Eventually it will 'develope' and, as kropotkin wrote, "turn where he will, he can find no better conditions. Everything has become private property, and he must accept, or die of hunger."

If he comes over in 1850s, he'd be in a good place to comment on bleeding kansas.
 
I know OP specified 1850 as the date when Marx moves to America, but it could potentially be far more interesting if he does so after 1843 but before 1847. Why? Marx was in favor of the "All Mexico" movement:

3pG2NBqz_o.png
 
I know OP specified 1850 as the date when Marx moves to America, but it could potentially be far more interesting if he does so after 1843 but before 1847. Why? Marx was in favor of the "All Mexico" movement:

3pG2NBqz_o.png

I've looked for such a quote in marx's writtings but haven't found one. Do you know their source for it?

It seems a bit out of charater given he wrote against france and spain's intervention in Mexico
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1861/11/23.htm
 
I've looked for such a quote in marx's writtings but haven't found one. Do you know their source for it?

It seems a bit out of charater given he wrote against france and spain's intervention in Mexico
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1861/11/23.htm

Haven't been able to find the exact reference, but did find this:

D.R. seems to be confusing the attitude Marx and Engels adopted toward this incursion with their earlier support to the U.S. war against Mexico (1846-48). Marx and Engels at that time believed—wrongly—that the U.S. invasion would further the development of a modern capitalist Mexico. Thus Engels wrote in 1848 that they “rejoiced” at the U.S. conquest of Mexico, perceiving “an advance when a country which has hitherto been exclusively wrapped up in its own affairs, perpetually rent with civil wars, and completely hindered in its development, a country whose best prospect had been to become industrially subject to Britain—when such a country is forcibly drawn into the historical process” (“The Movements of 1847,” Collected Works, Vol. 6).
 
I doubt it. A large part of why conditions in the US were better was due to its newness and geography. There is ALOT of land that hasnt been settled, both in the midwest and the West proper. The colonization of the west (because honestly thats what it was) acted as an outlet for disgruntled laborers, something that wasn't possible in Europe both because of a lack of land and an entrenched landed aristocracy that pushed for the enclosure acts. As such American workers had to be treated somewhat better because otherwise they would run off to that cheap land the government was selling.
Marx would have no problem identifying this and realizing it won't last. Eventually it will 'develope' and, as kropotkin wrote, "turn where he will, he can find no better conditions. Everything has become private property, and he must accept, or die of hunger."

If he comes over in 1850s, he'd be in a good place to comment on bleeding kansas.

Marx may go with this explanation himself, but it needs to be pointed out that it's not true. Long after the West closed American wages remained higher than elsewhere. They actually still are.

Wage levels have more to do with capital density and the extent of the market to sell into than they do with open frontiers. Ancient Athens and Early Modern Amsterdam didn't have some of the highest wages in the world because of an open frontier.
 
Marx may go with this explanation himself, but it needs to be pointed out that it's not true. Long after the West closed American wages remained higher than elsewhere. They actually still are.

Wage levels have more to do with capital density and the extent of the market to sell into than they do with open frontiers.

Not if you're looking at real wages. And while land expansion played a large part as i previously said, there are other factors that kept real wages consistently growing for most of American history. Dr. Richard Wolff has talked about this a number of times, but to summarize: America for a long time had a (relative) labor shortage, partly due to the availability of land, partly due to the exclusion of a large number of Americans from sections of the economy (women in particular), and also just due to the nature of technology available.

Come the 70s-ish, with the spread of computers in the economy, women joining the workforce, and a new wave of immigration, real wages stopped growing and have hovered at about the same level for the last 40 years or so.

At any rate we're not here to argue economics, the thread is about the historical political implications of marx in America.
 
Not if you're looking at real wages. And while land expansion played a large part as i previously said, there are other factors that kept real wages consistently growing for most of American history. Dr. Richard Wolff has talked about this a number of times, but to summarize: America for a long time had a (relative) labor shortage, partly due to the availability of land, partly due to the exclusion of a large number of Americans from sections of the economy (women in particular), and also just due to the nature of technology available.

Come the 70s-ish, with the spread of computers in the economy, women joining the workforce, and a new wave of immigration, real wages stopped growing and have hovered at about the same level for the last 40 years or so.

Your narrative is false.

Labor scarcity is relative to labor demand. High capital density and high aggregate demand from a large market to sell into drives high labor demand, makes labor scarce, and drives wages up.

There's a reason Native Americans, who had even more open land in front of them, had lower incomes than the white settlers displacing them.

Your point about the 70's is also false. Labor compensation tracked productivity growth until the beginning of the housing bubble in the early 2000's. Don't believe people when they tell you no one has gotten a raise since the 70's, they're lying to you.

At any rate we're not here to argue economics, the thread is about the historical political implications of marx in America.

You don't get to state your argument and then say, "But we shouldn't be talking about this".
 
He might try to get some sort of Socialist party going in the U.S.- & fail utterly, as the U.S., is very,
VERY hostile to Socialist doctrines(today IOTL in the U.S., if you wanna defeat something, just call it
"Socialist")

This is an anachronistic vision coming out of the Cold War. Bear in mind that this is a decade or two prior to the *Civil War.*
 
There's a reason Native Americans, who had even more open land in front of them, had lower incomes than the white settlers displacing them.

Your point about the 70's is also false. Labor compensation tracked productivity growth until the beginning of the housing bubble in the early 2000's. Don't believe people when they tell you no one has gotten a raise since the 70's, they're lying to you.

1)why are you constantly comparing noncapitalist economies to caitalist ones. Niether ancient greece or native americans had the social relations or the technological basis for it, their dynamics are completely different.

2) REAL wages, as in, wages adjusted for inflation, have stagnated. This is fact. And if you think I'm going to believe some strager on an online forum over a well studied econ professor with evidence then you're barking up the wrong tree
 

Brunaburh

Gone Fishin'
It would be fascinating to see how this would impact his ideas. When Charles Dickens visited the US he thought that working conditions in US factories were far superior to English ones. Marx in the US might have come up with far less radical ideas after comparing the differences between labor on both continents.

I suspect not, the nature of Marx's analysis was not based on the difficulty of working conditions, but the fact of exploitative capture of surplus value. Also, if you want to show Charles Dickens round your factory, I suspect it would be one of the better ones. While CD was likely comparing this to his own formative experiences working in factories in the 1820's and the worst contemporary London had to offer.
 
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